John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I think this is a great idea by Brad Justus to bring together the HIM community on social media. We’ve seen such amazing benefits from the communities that have been created around the #HITsm #hcsm and #hcldr hashtags (to name just a few).

In response to Brad’s tweet, some people suggested that the HIM and HIT communities are very similar and that maybe there shouldn’t be two communities. While I agree that many of the topics discussed by the HIM and HIT communities are the same, the people involved in both communities doesn’t overlap all that much. Most HIT professionals don’t see themselves as HIM professionals and vice versa. Maybe they should, but that’s a topic for another discussion.

Like Brad, I’ve had a chance to spend quite a bit of time at AHIMA and other HIM related events and it’s definitely a distinct community that looks at the challenges of health information management from a unique perspective. That’s why I think the #HIMSocial tag could do very well.

There are a few challenges to creating a community around the #HIMSocial tag. First, there is kind of already a community of HIM professionals that use the AHIMA hashtag. Although, I think the #HIMSocial tag would feel a little more inclusive and even create an opportunity for collaboration with the health IT community. Second, there are still a lot in the HIM community that don’t want to take part in social media like Twitter. There are some incredible exceptions, but speaking generally there are still a lot of HIM professionals that aren’t likely to take part in social media. No doubt that will continue to change.

If you’re part of the HIM (Health Information Management) profession, take a second to check out the #HIMSocial hashtag and send some tweets to contribute to the community.